


Steal a Family

by InsaneJuliann



Series: Eddie Diaz Week 2020 [6]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Firefam get together, Gen, some sort of quick and dirty Leverage AU basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24834367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneJuliann/pseuds/InsaneJuliann
Summary: Day 6: We Are FamilyEddie Diaz is a retired grifter - really, he's on the straight now.But maybe one more job won't hurt....
Series: Eddie Diaz Week 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789495
Comments: 22
Kudos: 61





	Steal a Family

**Author's Note:**

> This did not come out as well as I wanted it to, I ended up sleeping half my day away because apparently I'm more behind on sleep than I thought, and I had strange dreams that put me in a weird mood. My muse abandoned me.
> 
> Maybe one day I'll write this BETTER. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It was supposed to be straight forward. Bobby had seen the aftermath of that fire, and if the city official was right and it had been due to some hinky building plans…. It was only right, to help get those to the right people so that it wouldn’t happen again.

Bobby’d been a firefighter, once upon a time.

So he led the team of thieves and criminals that had been put together, helped guide them through things, helped save the day.

Except, that hadn’t been what happened.

~*~*~

Hen crossed her arms, leaning against the wall of Chim’s safehouse. “We were almost killed because some fucking asshole didn’t want the police finding out he accepted a bribe.”

“Well, he already had the death of those who died in the fire on his hands, what was a couple more.” Chim’s voice was easy, but the look on his face was grim. “What’s a little murder between friends, huh?”

“Yeah, except we’re not friends,” Buck pointed out. His foot was tapping anxiously against the leg of the barstool he was sitting at. “So? What do we do Bobby? I can make us some new IDs, get us tickets to anywhere.”

“Ooh, I’ve always wanted to visit Italy,” Chim said, rubbing his hands.

“You haven’t been to Italy?” Hen raised a brow.

“Not this time of year.”

“No, no. We’re not running.” Bobby stood, scowling. “We let him get away with this, we run scared, he’s just going to do it again. And this time, whatever deaths happen will be on our hands, too. No. We’re going to steal it all back and deliver it to the police.”

“The police. Who want us. Because we’re known criminals.” Hen’s brows were high. “Are you fucking crazy?”

“I’m not a known criminal.”

“Bullshit, computer boy, you’re known they just can’t pin anything on you because you _delete it all_.”

Buck beamed brightly at her. “Semantics.”

“What do I get out of it, besides this nebulous concept of possible saved lives? Because I’ll be honest, if I wind up in prison I’m not sure I care.” Chimney raised his chin, glaring down at Bobby. The other two stared at him as well, as serious as he’d seen them yet.

He smirked. “Well. Who said we can’t steal more than what we need while we’re at it? He does owe us some money after all.”

“Oh well!” Chim grinned, clapping his hands together. “I’m in.”

“Problem,” Buck piped up, raising his hand a bit. “That guy absolutely knows what we look like.”

“I _may_ have a solution to that,” Hen admitted. She shrugged up from the wall and tilted her head towards the door. “And lucky us, said solution lives in LA now.”

“Field trip time!” Buck cheered, high fiving Chim and following after Hen. Bobby let them pass him, smiling a bit, amused, before following himself.

~*~*~

“He’s, uh – a little cranky,” Buck said, watching dubiously as the mechanic inside the garage bay chewed out a customer for – something.

“Yeah, well, he’s got his issues, same as all of us,” Hen said. She waited until the mechanic and customer seemed to work whatever it was out before approaching him. “Hey, Eddie.”

“Hen.” He raised a brow, looking at her, past her at the rest of them, and back. “No.”

“You haven’t even heard what I got to say. What if I’m just visiting.”

“Hen,” he said warningly. “I’m on the straight now.”

Hen muttered something, which had the mechanic guy reaching out to swat her with a rag. “Aw, Eddie, c’mon, don’t be like that. Just hear us out.”

“I don’t work with teams,” Eddie said, eyeing them again. “Neither did you, I thought.”

“This is just a one-time-“

“Technically, two-time,” Chim tossed in.

“-thing,” Hen reassured him. “And the payout is gonna be sweet. Wouldn’t you like having enough to tell assholes where to shove it when they question you?”

Eddie tilted his head, eyes narrowing. “What’s the job?”

“We’re stealing something back,” Buck threw in, eyeing Eddie up and down. “And also making sure a certain corrupt city official regrets not paying us.”

“He won’t like us when we’re angry.”

“Maybe we can talk about this somewhere _private?_ ” Bobby sighed.

~*~*~

“Who’s Shannon?”

Eddie glared over his shoulder at the hacker. Kid was cocksure and had been poking at Eddie since he’d agreed to help.

Eddie was also pretty sure he’d been checking Eddie out, once or twice. Not that Eddie himself wasn’t also guilty of that.

“Ex-wife,” he muttered, responding to her inquiry about what she was supposed to tell Chris.

“And she… knows?”

“That I’m one of the best damn grifters around? Yes.” He shot Buck a smirk.

“Who’s Chris?”

“Have you never heard of invasion of privacy?”

“Man, I’m a hacker. Privacy’s only as good as someone’s firewall.”

Eddie scoffed. They were both quiet, but with a sigh, Eddie pulled up a picture of Shannon and Chris and tilted his phone so Buck would see it better.

“Oh my god, he’s your kid? He’s _adorable_ , man, I love kids!”

“He does,” Chimney said, dropping from the ceiling. “But that’s cause Buck himself is a big kid. He probably thinks Santa Claus is real.”

“He’s the spirit of Christmas, he’s basically real.”

“And I’m the Tooth Fairy.”

Eddie slipped his phone back in his pocket, leaving the two of them to their bickering. He joined Hen and Bobby, working out the details of the plan. It wasn’t bad, and Eddie was pretty sure that so long as Bobby wasn’t wrong about this cop friend of his, they’d actually manage to pull it off.

Buck appeared, leaning against Eddie a bit and peering over his shoulder. “Oh cool, I get to be an FBI Agent?”

Then again, maybe not.

~*~*~

The key to grifting, Eddie thought, was just being what everyone wanted or expected to see. People wanted to be charmed, they wanted to be flattered, they wanted to feel more important. If you gave that to them, they rarely thought to question it. Play the ego right, tease at the right insecurities, mix a bit of truth with your lies to help sell them…

So it wasn’t too hard, to get his way inside and get close enough to set things up so Buck could do his hacking thing.

It was painful watching Chimney and Buck try to grift for a while at first. Eddie grumbled and rolled his eyes and was tempted to brain himself against the nearest wall. It was embarrassing.

“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered, and was about to insist Bobby let him give them some sort of guidance over the comms when –

“Those have to be the two dumbest police officers I’ve ever seen.”

“Eh,” Hen said, frowning. “I’ve seen worse.”

“There is no way we’re this lucky.”

“Shh. Don’t question it.”

Eddie shook his head, but there was a smile growing that he couldn’t stop. This fucking team was a bunch of idiots, but hell if Eddie didn’t think they were growing on him.

~*~*~

It was going well, until for a moment, it wasn’t.

Eddie left position as soon as he heard Buck’s voice go from cheerful to serious. As soon as he heard Buck cut off from trading quips with Chim to say, “Whoa, okay, gun.”

He ignored Bobby’s orders for Eddie to finish what he’d been doing. Bobby’s voice was too tense and he didn’t insist when Eddie didn’t listen, so clearly he wasn’t upset. Hen though, beat Eddie to it.

He ran onto the scene just in time to see Hen dismantling the gun, a sneer of disgust on her face as she looked down at the security officer moaning weakly on the ground at her feet.

She glanced at him, raising a brow. “Go charm people, I got this.”

“That was so fucking cool,” Buck said, and his voice wasn’t quite shaking but….

“Yeah, you and I are going to work on some basic self defense, kid.”

So even though he kind of didn’t want to, Eddie went back to work.

And it all fell together so neatly it was like something out of a movie. They watched from nearby as Bobby’s cop friend – Sgt Grant – arrested the man who had hired them in the first place. As Buck showed them his bank account, which had a hell of a lot of zeros, with a smug look on his face.

Eddie pulled out his phone, checked his. Whistled.

“I take it this wasn’t the first time that asshole’s taken a bribe?”

“Why people never think to hide their money in more interesting, harder to find places, I don’t get but hey, I’m all for taking advantage of their stupidity.” Buck elbowed him lightly. “Better being Robin Hood than a mechanic, huh?”

“Robin Hood gave to the poor, not himself,” Hen said dryly.

“We just put a corrupt city official in prison, that’s good for the people!” Buck insisted.

“Just so long as we don’t have to wear tights.” Chim clapped Eddie and Buck on the shoulders. “Nice working with you two. Let’s not go through another near-murder again, huh?”

“It was for one job only,” Hen agreed.

“I don’t even know you guys,” Buck said, though it was hardly convincing. His gaze strayed and locked onto Eddie’s.

“I’m just a mechanic.”

They all looked at each other, than to Bobby.

Bobby was leaning against a bus stop bench, watching them with a slight smile on his face. “What? I’m just a former firefighter.”

Eddie’s eyes narrowed. “You sure didn’t think like one.”

“I read a lot of crime novels.”

“He does,” Buck said, nose scrunching. “I hacked his ereader accounts.”

“And he’s friends with a cop,” Hen pointed out. “He’s clearly not one of us. Can’t be trusted.”

“Fraternizing with the enemy. So disappointing,” Chim sighed. “You’d make a fine criminal, Bobby.”

Bobby just hummed, smiling at them still.

Eddie hesitated, glancing at the others.

“Okay, but what if we did it again?” Buck said, sounding almost desperate. “This is the most fun I’ve had in years, the best I’ve felt about myself in years, Bobby, c’mon. We could do it again, right? There’s plenty of assholes with too much power.”

“And too much money,” Chim added thoughtfully.

“They screw over people who don’t have the ability to fight back.” Hen crossed her arms. “Good people.”

“I don’t exactly enjoy being a mechanic,” Eddie said, shrugging.

Bobby grinned, glancing over towards the police cars in front of the building. That friend of his was making her way over. “You all have some form of warrants out on you, don’t you? Probably you should scatter.”

Chim made that I’m watching you gesture before slipping off. Hen glanced at the cop, then at Bobby, rolled her eyes, and said, “If you get handcuffed, don’t call me.”

Buck glanced at Eddie, who shrugged, turned, and started off towards where he’d parked his car. Buck followed.

“So where are you going?”

“Promised Shannon I’d pick Chris up from a friend’s house. Spend the day with him, since I had to cancel our usual weekend together.”

“Oh. Can I come?”

“I’m going to be hanging out with my kid. You know – eating junk food and watching animated movies.”

“Sounds fun.” Buck grinned.

Eddie snorted, rolling his eyes, but gestured for Buck to hop into his truck. “Yeah, alright.”

~*~*~

Buck and Eddie were getting lunch two days later when Buck’s phone lit up with a call from Bobby.

Buck answered, a grin growing on his face. “Oh hell yeah. Sounds like fun.”

Eddie raised a brow.

“Bobby’s down for us being Robin Hoods of the modern age,” Buck explained.

“Fine,” Eddie said after a moment of thought. “But only if you stop calling us Robin Hoods.”

“Whatever, someone else can be in charge of the name then.”

A few weeks later found Eddie grinning at the others as Buck showed them around the office space he’d gotten them and the pseudo business he’d erected in the passing time. It was pretty fucking cool to see.

Hen fist bumped Eddie, giving him her own little smirk. “How much of you sticking around is the chance to shove it to rich entitled assholes and how much of it is that?” she asked, tilting her head towards Buck.

Eddie shrugged, smiling. “What can I say. I kinda liked working as a team.”

“Yeah,” Hen mused, sounding cautiously pleased. “They’re a bunch of idiots, but I kinda like them, too. Even if it will be strange being bad and good at the same time.”

“Alright,” said Bobby, clapping his hands together and gaining their attention. “I got a job for us. Corrupt health inspector and a family run business about to be shut down after a series of very suspicious accidents.”

Buck did something on his tablet, and the screens on the wall lit up with information – photos, official looking documents, hospital bills, and more.

“Sometimes you gotta fight fire with fire,” Eddie offered to her quietly, before going to take his seat.

There was a kind of poetic justice to it, bad guys doing good by providing supposedly good guys were doing bad things.

Plus, it meant more time around these people, and Eddie –

Well, Eddie had been looking for a family like this for years, since before he and Shannon officially ended even.

Maybe, their little group of misfit criminals was it.


End file.
